I guess that's why we have two of them...

If memory serves, my biology teacher (who herself had polycystic kidneys and had spent a number of years on dialysis before getting a transplant) said you can live perfectly healthily with about 20% kidney functionality, and if it drops below that level, they start making dietary adjustments first and it is only when it gets really low that they start medical intervention.

How bizarre, my biology teacher had exactly the same problem!

Anyone with a kidney function of 70 or more can be a donor. (i.e. 70% of the expected function).

It is only when you get down to 20 and lower that they really start to worry about kidney problems.

The human body is remarkably good (I have found anyway) at building in redundancy and margins for error.

I agree with Al on this one.

Cool! Maybe you went to the same school!!!

Wait.......

Maybe you're related and you don't even know it!!!

Just to update. I received a letter yesterday (though didn't read it until today) from the Consultant Urologist. The CT scan I had confirms no cancer, which is cool. But it does throw up more issues. The right kidney is horseshoe-shaped, though the left is fine. They want to do more tests.

I don't know if this means I should have had three kidneys and two formed a horseshoe (unlikely), or the right kidney was just malformed (more likely). The next two tests involve dye tests to look at where the flow of urine comes from, and where the blood goes.

Well that's good..... The "not cancer" part.

So some more clarification. I have one kidney and it happens to be horseshoe shaped. For those who don't know, when you're developing, the two kidneys start off as one that divides into two that then separate and grow away from each other. Mine didn't separate and hence have formed one mass.



Unfortunately, the consultant wasn't there and I saw the registrar who couldn't tell me anything more than what I already knew. What I needed to know was whether this was all incidental to my high blood pressure and polycythaemia, or whether they were related. What I really wanted to know was whether I could avoid surgery. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell me.

So a wasted afternoon.

This might be a silly question...

But if they separated them now via surgery.

Would they both just heal up and be all fine?

Or would the fact that they were once one Kidney mean that "both" Kidneys would now have issues?

There's no real benefit in dividing the kidneys. Too many complications for too little benefit. This kind of thing tends to be left alone unless it causes problems.

One of those problems is a blockage in the ureter (the tube that connects the kidney to the bladder - this is what urine travels down after being formed in the kidney and is also where the majority of "kidney" stones develop). We think there was a blockage at some point and this caused the righ half of the horseshoe kidneyto swell up and form cysts. The next tests would be to look the ureter by injecting dye.

Gah!

I needed to have weekly blood taken (equivalent of one unit each time). I came last week and waited several hours before being seen yet it was all done and dusted within thirty minutes. The nurse booked me in for today.

I turn up and they don't have me on the sytem until next Wednesday. Two things wrong here - it should have been weekly (I need five sessions over five weeks before my next outpatient appointment), and I would never book on a Wednesday because of work and teaching. Someone has cocked up here and by the judge of things, I'm not the only one at fault.

I'm tempted to make a complaint via PALS.

My bloods have been fine since I had a few units taken out. I definitely feel the cold more than I used to. No more walking around in T-shirt and shorts at night. I now have to have the kidneys looked at. One is a DMSA scan where they inject a radioactive tracer into your blood and then see how much goes to each kidney. This I had today - spent around five hours in hospital. This was relatively easy though spending 40 mins on your back with your hands behind your head becomes torture after five mins. I could barely move my arms or put my jacket on afterwards.

The second test is theoretically worse. They stick a pipe into my wee-wee, inject dye so it goes to the bladder and thence to the kidneys. It looks for any blockages along the route. I'm worried about things going and out of my jap's eye.

I shall spend the rest of the afternoon wincing in sympathy.

I had something similar - a urethroscopy to use ultrasound to shatter a kidney stone. Under a general. I think on reflection that's exactly how I'd want it done. I really wouldn't want to know anything about it at all.

I've just clenched up reading that.

I hope that whatever you have is not as serious as it sounds.